


Brave Heart, Nevermind

by Wolf_Storm



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Caring John, Character Study, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Fix-It, Gen, His Last Vow Spoilers, Hospitals, Injured Sherlock, Major Character Injury, Medical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 20:44:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1524989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_Storm/pseuds/Wolf_Storm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not easy when your best friend finds himself being shot and almost dying on you again. When it is your wife who put him it that situation, though, it gets even more complicated. When your best friend almost kills himself again, mind you, things are a little bit not really good.<br/>Which is precisely why John Watson finds himself in a hospital with a bit too much time to think while waiting for his best friend to gain consciousness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brave Heart, Nevermind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ispyissy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ispyissy/gifts), [YellowBananaOwl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowBananaOwl/gifts).



> Hi folks!  
> Been writing this for the better part of the semester and now that the school is over, here are the results.  
> [YellowBananaOwl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowBananaOwl/pseuds/YellowBananaOwl) has been a precious advisor for this work, and [Ispyissy](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Ispyissy/pseuds/Ispyissy) beta-ed and is an absolute sweetheart. I wouldn't be able to write and post this without them.  
> I'd like to announce that I am not a medical professional. If any of you readers are, or have a better understanding of urgent medicine than I do and spot an obvious factic mistake in this work, please don't hesitate to let me know.  
> Many thanks to [cookieswillcrumble](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cookieswillcrumble/pseuds/cookieswillcrumble) and her absolutely brilliant [ meta](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1235479/chapters/2535226%22)! It helped me a lot to get the facts straight.  
> Hope you'll enjoy this.
> 
> The author does not consent for this work to be used in public presentation without her permission.

It is afternoon of the next day after their heated discussion in Baker Street before John finds himself sitting in Sherlock’s hospital room. The events of the past night are somewhat bleary to him – his crippling fear after discovering the maniac of his best friend escaping through a window not a week after being shot, the stitches still holding his torn flesh together instead of scar tissue, the emotional roller coaster at discovering his pregnant wife being the person who caused Sherlock to be pronounced dead for the second time in his life (and oh god, when the doctors told him how it went, showed him the noted time of death, how they had to repeatedly assure him that Sherlock was heading to emergency surgery to extract the bullet and repair the damage it wrecked upon him), that his wife was a bloody psychopathic killing spy with a better aim than he had, her apparent lack of appropriate remorse about shooting Sherlock and then their argument… it’s been rather too much for the nerves of the ex-army doctor.

He had of course taken a ride in the ambulance – anything was better than staying with Mary, or whoever she’d turned out to be, in Baker Street. He was afraid he might hurt her physically if he was left with her without witnesses present. John had tried to calm an upset and suffering Sherlock right until the consulting detective lost consciousness a few minutes into the ride, and started praying for a God he rarely even thought of when the ECG monitor started beeping out bradycardia caused by massive internal haemorrhage. With atropine involved, the ambulance crew managed to keep Sherlock’s heart beating long enough to arrive to the hospital’s emergency admission entrance. Just as if Sherlock knew how long to chase off fibrillation for a proper dramatic effect. But John wasn’t allowed to assist, so he just squeezed Sherlock’s hand tight – he’d been holding it ever since he boarded the ambulance and Sherlock had been clinging to him right until he passed out – and watched his best friend disappear behind closed doors.

After a wait that felt like eternity made of just him sitting by himself and an ungodly presence burdening his head, the door opened to reveal Sherlock being wheeled out towards a lift, intubated, hooked up to two units of blood and with a heart monitor beeping out a steadier, if too slow a rhythm. A doctor came to see John, telling him that a surgery to repair the internal damage the sodding idiot has caused to himself by tearing the stitches out was about to start very soon and that he should really go home and rest and that he would be informed of the results. John understood it as a very polite and caring version of “don’t get your hopes too up, the man is lucky to still be alive” and let himself be taken outside to a waiting cab which took him to the suburb house he had with Mary.

Once there, John instructed the cabbie to wait while he packed everything he needed for an extended stay out of home, deliberately ignored Mary’s hurt and apologetic attempts to communicate other than hissing “don’t you dare to come near him again!” at her, and made his brisk run for the cab that took him back to Baker Street. There he spent another half an hour with nervous pacing before finally breaking down and hurling the chair Mary sat on in their previous confrontation all around the apartment in a fit of rage. Totally spent but knowing that he wouldn’t fall asleep anyway, he took two Valium pills that Mrs Hudson kept in her flat, took a shower and fell into his bed, barely registering some time later that a text message beeped itself known sometime in the early hours of morning. He actually managed to open it but fell asleep reading the first two words, and it took him several hours and numerous tries to decipher that Sherlock was alive, out of surgery and no longer critical and that he would be transferred to ICU in the afternoon if no complications arose. Satisfied with that, John slept off the rest of his exhaustion and sedatives into early afternoon. Mrs Hudson came to wake him up, bringing lunch, which he ate with a mild fight, still feeling rather too out of his own skin to eat a proper meal, but he knew that it would get him sooner on his feet.

Which is how he found his way next to the very pale, very still figure of his best friend, thankfully extubated but already knocked out with sedatives, equipped once again with a nasal cannula delivering increased intake of oxygen; nasty-looking chest drain inserted into his side, freeing his chest cavity of accumulated fluids; a central line catheter trapped near his clavicle, the IV line pushed into his right elbow as the left presents a spectacular multi-coloured bruise – a common side effect of having the line ripped out in a hurry –; and the heart monitor showing a steady, healthy action.

A big fan is slowly rotating just under the ceiling when John tentatively sits on the edge of Sherlock’s bed. For some time he alters glaring at the unconscious form that lies topless, hidden waist-down under warm covers with new broad bandages all over its midsection accusing John of not noticing Sherlock’s condition deteriorating so drastically before, glaring out of the window into the grey sky, and watching the fan rotate, glad for the little comfort of air moving. It helps with the acute feeling of suffocation that has been plaguing him since all this hell broke loose.

After a while, John tentatively wraps his fingers around the cold, unmoving flesh of Sherlock’s left hand. He doesn’t know whether Sherlock would oppose to be touched or accept the comfort of his friend’s warm hands had he been awake. John has had serious trouble reading Sherlock’s signals lately but the more he thinks about it, the more he realizes how much he’s changed during his time away. How lonely the consulting detective must have been feeling. With John moved away, happily (at least a week ago) married and expecting a baby, what was he left exactly? He was a big boy, no doubt, more or less capable of living alone but John was so smitten by his engagement and wedding before to truly notice the little signs of Sherlock camouflaging his fear of being abandoned and forgotten. It was just as Mary told him before and damn her to the seventh circle of Hell! – Sherlock was terrified of being left out but still he did everything he could to ensure John’s happiness, who in turn barely acknowledged it as anything out of the ordinary.

He could kick himself into the jaw for that now. Sitting here with Sherlock still not awake, clasping his wrist in one hand and tracing little soothing patterns into the bruise in his elbow, John swears to both himself and to Sherlock that he would never, ever leave him again. He is truly conflicted right now – he doesn’t know if he still loves Mary, he fears he does, he fears that he’s going to forgive her for lying to him, but he is absolutely sure he will never in a lifetime forgive her for what she’s done to Sherlock. He knows himself to rather love his unborn child, he has from the moment Sherlock spilled the deduction on the dance floor of the wedding night, but he realizes that with still quite soon into Mary’s pregnancy and the wreckage their lives have become in the last hours, he probably loves more the idea of having a child, of being a father to someone tiny and innocent. He partly feels horrible for that, of course, but isn’t that a common thing for expecting fathers? The baby isn’t going to be here for months yet, and with its mother turning out as a trained assassin… no, John has to abandon this train of thought before he gets angry again. He has to be calm and steady for Sherlock now, because Sherlock needs him. That’s the one thing he is absolutely sure of. Yes, sometimes next year there will be a little person that will need his protection and guidance and he’ll provide that, of course, but Sherlock needs him now.

John can’t help but be amazed by how much his perception of Sherlock has changed in the past year. Before that, before the awful jump from the roof, John never thought to consider Sherlock vulnerable in any way. He was always so strong, so collected, even when thrown off guard he always managed to get himself in line. Then, he came back from the dead and was different. Kinder, less verbally abusive, more generous, showing compassion or even affection. But this… John now knows that as self-sufficient as Sherlock is, or rather seems to be, he needs to be protected and assured of their friendship much more than he would suspect before. John has no doubt about loving Sherlock – he does love the man, he loves him senseless and differently from how he’s ever loved anybody and he knows that his feelings are reciprocated. He no longer dares to claim the exact nature of their shared affection because between platonic, romantic, sexual or some altogether different sort of need he could feel for another person he fails to see the difference anymore when it comes to Sherlock. He closes hands around the younger man’s hand, succeeding in getting it a bit warmer than it was a few minutes ago, and for a moment wishes that he were gay as so many people believe him to be, or at least directly interested more that way into his former flatmate. He wishes for Sherlock to be that way too. There would have been a chance for them then. Things would be so much easier if they could just shag their frustration out of one another and kiss freely to affirm their love. They would drive each other mad and it would be glorious and utterly perfect and just what they both would need.

Maybe in some twist of fate they might get to that point, maybe that is what the future holds for them. John doesn’t know, but he would give anything he has and some of what he doesn’t have to clear this confusing cloud that is fogging his head. He wishes to have had a lucid mind about this from the first day he met this maddening, beautiful idiot. Instead, his wife almost murdered his dear friend and he’s left to pick the pieces. At least now John experiences no scepticism about Sherlock pulling through this. The bastard’s just too stubborn to die, as always.

John thinks about the morphine coursing through Sherlock’s veins. With the recent opium relapse, a week worth of morphine medication and now another God-knows-how-long of the drug started again there’s a serious threat of Sherlock’s past addiction re-emerging in full force. He will need to have some words with both Sherlock and his brother about setting measures to keep that from happening. Last thing Sherlock needs right now is going through an opiate withdrawal. The undeniable truth though is that he cannot do without the morphine right now. No morphine means horrible pain, horrible pain means shock, shock in his state means… no, John isn’t ready to go on that path. Not after having to go on it twice in one week.

He tries not to think of how much weight has Sherlock lost since he was shot. He and Mary _(damn you, you killed him! Does he mean nothing to you? Were you playing with us the whole time? He loved you, he still loves you and I… damn!)_ had been making quite a good job in keeping the detective eating fairly healthily for months, a no small feat that John is particularly proud of, only for him to drop at least half a stone of muscle mass before running away from hospital. John remembers his own recovery in disturbing detail – the delirium of being drugged out of his mind, unable to tell the nurses what was bothering him, the physiotherapy of his butchered shoulder only for the pain to relocate into his leg, the searing pain of learning how to use his arm again… and when it was done, John found himself being transformed from a very fit man, a soldier with the body of a soldier, rather intimidating even with his shorter frame, into a skinny shell of nightmares and malfunctioning limbs.

His injury wasn’t even as serious as Sherlock’s original wound. Not to mention that John certainly didn’t escape hospitals and tear a much bigger hole into himself. Sherlock, for a man of his age and height, is and always has been well-muscled while simultaneously staying on the thin side of being slim. John will need to ensure that he eats solid food as soon as possible and conducts sensible physical therapy in order not to become a skeleton. He will of course move back to Baker Street when Sherlock is released because he doesn’t trust anyone to take better care of his detective than he trusts himself.

He almost misses the first twitches of Sherlock’s eyelashes because his eyes are overtired from staring at white all the time, and Sherlock is so horribly pale despite the red bag filling his body with blood. His skin and the sheets blend together in John’s vision way too much. As it is, he first sees the light frown that creases the detective’s eyebrows and feels his fingers shake in John’s hand.

“Sherlock?” John breathes gently and encourages his friend by pressing his palm a bit. His fingers find the knot of veins on Sherlock’s wrist and he counts the beats because it reassures him much more than the sterile beeping of the heart monitor. The warmth that finally settled there, the soft texture of skin, somewhat softer than he’d expect in an adult man, the faint flutter of life underneath, it all speaks in measures he cannot articulate. “Sherlock, buddy, can you hear me? I’m right here. Just here.”

Sherlock makes no sound at first, just his hand keeps spasming erratically. He starts taking deeper breaths that seem to hitch a bit. John looks over the monitors, checking that his friend is getting the appropriate amount of morphine. He knows he is, he knows he can’t possibly make it any better. A patient can only get so much of opioids before they start affecting one’s breathing, and Sherlock is getting that much. He will not wake fully, not now; he will be groggy and dizzy and probably won’t remember much of it later. The wounds – both the original from the bullet and the new incisions the doctors had to cut to get to the bleeding spot in his liver without tearing the man further apart – will still hurt quite a bit but with some luck Sherlock’s mind is too fuzzy right now to notice much beyond a vague-ish feeling of “well, we’ve got a pain here”.

“Sherlock.”

The detective groans softly, like a child thrown into the claws of a nightmare, eyes fluttering like the wings of a hummingbird, and he jerkily turns his head to the sound of John’s voice. His long, thin fingers find the cuff of John’s sleeve, bury themselves in the cotton of the shirt and weakly close into a loose fist. John blinks and then, as if struck with a ray of knowledge, shifts his hand so his fingers interweave with Sherlock’s. He doesn’t think about the intimacy of that gesture, of the fact that this is how he would normally hold a lover’s hand _(this is how Mary loved to hold hands)_. Right now, this is the easiest way to let Sherlock know that he is out of harm’s way, that John won’t ever let him be hurt again, that he will protect him with claws and teeth if needed to. So he just presses their hands together in an universal language of I’m here. You’re safe. You’re loved.

“Sherlock,” John says softly again and puts his other hand on his friend’s shoulder upon recognizing the half-hearted intention to roll over. “No, Sherlock, you must not move, alright? You’re injured pretty badly, the stitches need to stay in this time.”

Sherlock’s eyes crack open. He blinks slowly several times and looks around, but it is clear to John that he can see next to nothing. Quite predictably, the long white fingers tighten their grip on the doctor’s hand – a plain sign of distress. John remembers how this goes from his own experience, both as a patient and as a doctor caring for injured soldiers in Kandahar. Disorientation, confusion, persistent nausea from the cocktail of anaesthetics and pain medication, the constant circle of passing out and waking up an hour or two later with little to no recollection of being awake before that sometimes took a day to break – he's seen and lived all of these and more. He must keep Sherlock from freaking out if he were to do that. He mustn’t stress out, what he needs right now is nutrients, morphine and plenty of sleep. He’s already slept so much since last week, almost more than John has seen him sleep since he came back and definitely has to keep in it for some time.

John gently removes his hand from Sherlock’s shoulder to his cheek and gently turns the detective’s head so he’s facing him. The younger man blinks again and stares at the ex-army doctor like he is seeing him for the first time in his life. Under any other circumstances, it would be absolutely hilarious. As it is, John feels the corners of his lips tugging up, though his smile is that of fondness and affection rather than amusement.

„Hello,“ John says gently and runs his thumb over Sherlock's right cheekbone, careful not to catch the oxygen supplement cable. “It's okay. I'm here, buddy. I’m here.“

Sherlock’s pupils are contracted despite the half-lit room – a side effect of the morphine he’s getting. He’s straining hard to see at least something, that much is clear, so John shifts a bit closer to him to help with that. It takes a little while until the detective’s eyebrows go up into his fringe. He looks genuinely shocked and disbelieving upon finding John on the edge of his hospital bunk. He makes a sound that can be anything between a weak cough and “John,” and his death grip on the doctor’s knuckles loosens as his fingers clumsily reach towards his face.

John understands the gesture immediately and slowly brings the marble-white limb to his cheek, letting his friend feel with his own skin that he is there for real. He leans into the tentative touch that cups the side of his face and presses his index and middle finger again into the web of veins on Sherlock’s wrist. The heartbeat is there, strong, and Sherlock’s nails slightly graze over his skin there and back again. John’s own left hand brushes Sherlock’s hair off his forehead and caresses his face down the temple with the back of his knuckles in an attempt to soothe away the last lines of anguish from his expression. A few moments later the younger man’s rigid body visibly relaxes, the detective finally assured by the friendliest presence in the world.

“God, I was so afraid,” John whispers and, almost as an after-thought, brings the back of Sherlock’s wrist to his lips. His other hand doesn’t leave the detective’s cheek for a second. “So afraid. You should have told me, Sherlock.”

Sherlock is looking up at him wearing the expression of utmost trust and vulnerability, something he surely would never show had he been sober. John doesn’t know how much of what he says right now the other man actually processes. It’s all the same, really – they’ll have this conversation again and again, until the message of it gets through Sherlock’s thick skull, until the clever detective realizes that he can tell his blogger absolutely, absolutely anything. John wishes that Sherlock felt at ease with him enough to tell him the identity of his shooter but at the same time he realizes why that hadn’t happened that way. He had to see the proof on his own eyes, even if he already had suspicions. In all honesty he isn’t sure of he would believe Sherlock out of the sudden had he not seen his interaction with the woman that claimed the name Mary Watson.

Funny how things turn around so quickly.

Sherlock’s pulse beats under his lips obediently and his chest rises and falls rhythmically under the cocoon of bandages. His fingers find John’s shoulder and pass onto his open palm from there. John lets their connected hands fall into his lap, Sherlock’s long, pale, spidery fingers locking onto him like his life depended on it. And maybe it does, in a way. John doesn’t have any energy left to ponder this line of thought right now. He needs something to eat - he’s been sitting here for hours - and preferably somewhere to crash and sleep for a bit, as the emotional exhaustion of the last week already is catching up with him. It’ll be best to solve the sleep deficit he’s worked up now, while Sherlock is supposed to spend over twenty hours a day unconscious so he won’t be missing out much.

As it is, Sherlock’s eyelids are already dropping again. He breathes in and starts opening his mouth but before he can attempt saying something, John puts his index finger over those strangely carved lips.

“No talking,” he murmurs softly. "Recently extubated, remember?"

The only answer he gets is a weak shake of Sherlock’s head. He seems to be keeping himself awake only by the strength of will and it’s questionable whether he’s even lucid enough to understand what John asked him in the first place. Morphine does that to people.

He takes to stroking Sherlock’s cheek again as the detective’s eyes finally shut closed. John feels his skin catching on a day’s worth of stubble. He helped Sherlock with shaving the morning before his grand escape from the NHS’s care because the man insisted on being clean-shaven. John feels the implications of that - of his wife shooting his best friend dead and said best friend letting him put a razor to his throat a week after that, absolutely trusting him. After that, John  waited for Sherlock to take a nap, as he always did these days - had actually taken leave from work to keep the detective company - before going home to Mary.

Well, there’s nowhere to rush now. He doesn’t really want to be anywhere else: not alone in Baker Street, not at work, definitely not at his house. Everywhere that doesn’t have Sherlock is too boring for him.

Sherlock’s heart monitor beeps out a slower rhythm that indicates sleep when John finally drags a chair from under the window to the bedside to settle himself in. Another ten minutes later he lets his head dip forward until his forehead bumps into the hard mass of bones and muscle that is Sherlock’s hip. He snuggles around a bit, finding a comfortable position that won’t kill his necks in ten minutes, allows him to breathe freely and still includes physical contact with Sherlock, even though his skin is hidden under the sheet and layers of bandages.

John Watson isn’t going anywhere. This is his place, by Sherlock Holmes’ side. Wherever in time and space that might be.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to drop a line or check out my tumblr: wolflioness.tumblr.com


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